Upon first opening the box, I was impressed that everything seemed to be included and plug and play ready, and for the most part it was, especially since I opted to order the non-wifi enabled version, sticking to the straight forward (and slightly cheaper) wired connection. Having pre-ordered I got a break on the price, and in total (after price, shipping, taxes, brokerage fees) it worked out to be about $125 CDN, which now is @ $129.99 USD but so far it is well worth the current price.
Having unpacked all of the wires, and hooked everything up I found that the remote didn't work, fortunately, although annoying, it was simply that there was no included CR2032 battery. The only other thing not included was an S-video cable, but that's really a triviality, in comparison to the lack of a battery for the remote. I usually would have no problem with this, as "batteries not included" is not a new thing, but since there was no indication of this before (or after) ordering, and is not mentioned anywhere on the box, or in the documentation. This means that since I didn't open the box until I got up for my "day job" at 9 pm, I had to wait until the stores opened the next morning before being able to get past the opening screen.
Fast forward to this morning, where I pick up a 2-pack of batteries, and a fancy new iPod case... oddly enough an iClear from Griffin... I get home, and head straight to my desk where I've got the TuneCenter waiting for input from a juiced up remote. Once that was done the fun could begin.
First thing's first, I have to head straight to the settings, just to see how much I can customize my experience. All pretty standard fare here, with the exception of the Network Setup Assistant. This allows you to setup you're connection if you don't use DHCP, or if you need to use a proxy to connect to the internet.
There was however a glitch when selecting the EQ Setting from the setup menu, which no matter which of my iPods I connected it kept telling me to attach an iPod. I hope this can be corrected via some kind of web-update, seeing as it is an internet enabled device.
This leads to the internet radio portion, which was nice to see that the listing updated as soon as I selected it for the first time, and I hope it will continue to do so on a regular basis, the 10 seconds to update is worth not having to ever get an error when trying to listen to an unavailable station. Having this capability may seem a little extraneous to some, but if I want to listen to something other than my library it's nice to have, and the iPod doesn't need to be connected for the internet radio to work.
The number and variety of stations available are enough to suit just about everyone, and any mood, and is just as easy to select as just about anything else in the menus.
The iPod interface is pretty much the same hierarchical structure that you would find on the iPod and works in the same intuitive manner, especially since the remote works in virtually the same manner as the click wheel, with a few extra buttons to provide direct access to certain functions, like settings, and an on/off button.
The "Now Playing" screen is much like that of the iPod, with a fancy background, and display of various bits of information, and although I'd prefer to turn off the Griffiin TuneCenter branding in the lower left (since I know what I bought) but it's something that I can live with, at least for now.The only complaints that I have so far, are:
- The lack of an included remote battery.
- The interface is a little slow in responding to commands.
- The EQ Setting seems to simply not work.
- To watch video (if you have a video capable iPod) you can't use the TuneCenter interface to select them, but rather the screen turns off and you need to use the iPod's own screen to navigate, which kind of negates the point of having a remote. Heck it doesn't even put you into the video portion of the iPod menu.
- The interface has no aspect ratio selector, and is a sort of an in between of 4:3 and 16:9 resulting in a slightly stretched widescreen mode that doesn't quite fill the screen, and slightly squished 4:3 mode which still doesn't quite fill the width of the screen.
- I can't leave my iPod in it's new iClear case, or any other case for that matter, without removing the dock adapter, thereby removing support for the iPod, and it's dock connector.
- No Album Art!!! But that's an Apple limitation with the iPod dock connection, rather than the TuneCenter.
- No Syncing capability
All in all it's a very good solution for getting your iPod on your TV, and essentially it's a media center PC without the PC. All this in a cheap, compact little unit. It also allows you to view your DRM "protected" content from the iTunes store, as well as your own (legally) ripped content, directly on your TV.
That's all for now, I'll do another follow up after a living with the TuneCenter for a while, to see if it maintains it's usefulness rather then just having that new "wow" factor.
Until next time,
T
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